How to get a swift enum's associated value regardless of the enum case

Question

I have an object FormField which has two properties: a String name, and a value which can accept any type--hence I've made it Any!. However, I've been told in a separate question to use an enum with associated values instead of Any!.

enum Value {
    case Text(String!)
    case CoreDataObject(NSManagedObject!)
}

class FormField {
    var name: String
    var value: Value?
    // initializers...
}

This approach makes it awfully verbose to check for nullity however. If I wanted to display an alert view for all the missing fields in the form, I'll have to repeat a nil check for every case in a switch statement:

for field in self.fields {
    if let value = field.value {
        switch value {
        case .Text(let text):
            if text == nil {
                missingFields.append(field.name)
            }
        case .CoreDataObject(let object):
            if object == nil {
                missingFields.append(field.name)
            }
        }
    }
}

Is there a shorter way of accessing the enum's associated value, regardless of the type? If I make FormField.value an Any! the above code would be as easy as:

for field in self.fields {
    if field.value == nil {
        missingFields.append(field.name)
    }
}

Answer 1

Define a method isMissing() inside the enum - write it once and only once. Then you get nearly exactly what you prefer:

for field in self.fields {
    if field.value.isMissing() {
        missingFields.append(field.name)
    }
}

It would look something like this (from the Swift Interpreter):

  1> class Foo {}
   >
  2> enum Value { 
  3.     case One(Foo!) 
  4.     case Two(Foo!) 
  5.      
  6.     func isMissing () -> Bool { 
  7.         switch self { 
  8.         case let .One(foo): return foo == nil 
  9.         case let .Two(foo): return foo == nil 
 10.         } 
 11.     } 
 12. }    
 13> let aVal = Value.One(nil)
aVal: Value = One {
  One = nil
}
 14> aVal.isMissing()
$R0: Bool = true

Answer 2

With Swift 2 it's possible to get the associated value using reflection.

To make that easier just add the code below to your project and extend your enum with the EVAssociated protocol.

    public protocol EVAssociated {
    }

    public extension EVAssociated {
        public var associated: (label:String, value: Any?) {
            get {
                let mirror = Mirror(reflecting: self)
                if let associated = mirror.children.first {
                    return (associated.label!, associated.value)
                }
                print("WARNING: Enum option of \(self) does not have an associated value")
                return ("\(self)", nil)
            }
        }
    }

Then you can access the .asociated value with code like this:

    class EVReflectionTests: XCTestCase {
            func testEnumAssociatedValues() {
                let parameters:[EVAssociated] = [usersParameters.number(19),
usersParameters.authors_only(false)]
            let y = WordPressRequestConvertible.MeLikes("XX", Dictionary(associated: parameters))
            // Now just extract the label and associated values from this enum
            let label = y.associated.label
            let (token, param) = y.associated.value as! (String, [String:Any]?)

            XCTAssertEqual("MeLikes", label, "The label of the enum should be MeLikes")
            XCTAssertEqual("XX", token, "The token associated value of the enum should be XX")
            XCTAssertEqual(19, param?["number"] as? Int, "The number param associated value of the enum should be 19")
            XCTAssertEqual(false, param?["authors_only"] as? Bool, "The authors_only param associated value of the enum should be false")

            print("\(label) = {token = \(token), params = \(param)")
        }
    }

    // See http://github.com/evermeer/EVWordPressAPI for a full functional usage of associated values
    enum WordPressRequestConvertible: EVAssociated {
        case Users(String, Dictionary<String, Any>?)
        case Suggest(String, Dictionary<String, Any>?)
        case Me(String, Dictionary<String, Any>?)
        case MeLikes(String, Dictionary<String, Any>?)
        case Shortcodes(String, Dictionary<String, Any>?)
    }

    public enum usersParameters: EVAssociated {
        case context(String)
        case http_envelope(Bool)
        case pretty(Bool)
        case meta(String)
        case fields(String)
        case callback(String)
        case number(Int)
        case offset(Int)
        case order(String)
        case order_by(String)
        case authors_only(Bool)
        case type(String)
    }

The code above is now available as a cocoapod susbspec at https://github.com/evermeer/Stuff#enum It also has an other nice enum extension for enumerating all enum values.